Congress turns to next crisis: Shutdown

The $85 billion, across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester are almost certainly going to occur effective 11:59 p.m. Friday after the Senate rejected two last-minute measures to stave them off on Thursday.

President Barack Obama will most likely issue the order that will trigger hundreds of thousands of furloughs in the federal government and severely impact many departments including the Pentagon. This, despite summoning congressional leaders to the White House on Friday morning for a meeting on the way forward.

For both Congress and Obama, surrendering to the automatic cuts represents a watershed event and one that won’t necessarily end soon. Indeed, Thursday’s votes usher in what could be months of turmoil, as the government adjusts like an aircraft carrier turning slowly in the ocean.

Attention now immediately shifts to how Congress can avert a potentially calamitous government shutdown on March 27, when a stopgap continuing resolution, or CR, expires.

In an interview Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Democrats would wait to see what the House produces before making decisions on how to proceed on the CR.

Asked about his talks with House Speaker John Boehner on the issue, “We’ve talked about the CR, he’s going to have to make a decision on what they’re going to do. At this stage, at least as far as I know, I don’t know if they know what they’re going to do.”

To avoid a blowup, leaders in both parties seem determined not to use any extension of the CR as a vehicle to change the cuts significantly. But they could possibly provide incremental relief to agencies by updating their appropriations, from which the cuts are made.

The House is already moving in this direction with a draft CR that would include a full-year budget for the Defense Department, for example. Senate Democrats will want to expand on this to include domestic agencies as well.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Reid was noncommittal on the CR, but he insisted Democrats would seek new taxes as part of a deal to reverse the sequester.

“Yes, we’re open to any reasonable approach,” Reid said when asked if he’d be willing to reallocate the cuts through the CR. “But remember, we cannot solve the problems of this country with cuts, cuts, cuts. We’ve cut $2.6 trillion. We need to do more. But we’re going to do it with — in a balanced approach.”

When Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) unveils her budget resolution in March, she’ll include language that would call for the sequester to be replaced with spending cuts in other parts of the government, she said Thursday. But the budget resolution is a nonbinding blueprint, and it’ll be hard for the two chambers to cut a budget deal that would eventually lead to a deficit-cutting law to replace the sequester — much less urgently.

That leaves the focus on the March government spending fight. Following the Senate votes Thursday, some Republicans said they are open to passing an omnibus spending plan that would include funding for all agencies, but at lower levels than the $1.043 trillion sought by Democrats.